Tomorrow GMA announces her environmental agenda - ROSES AND THORNS by Alejandro R. Roces

Tomorrow, the Philippines will join the rest of the world in celebrating International Earth Day 2001. President Macapagal-Arroyo will open the celebration, the focus of which will be on the International "Clean Energy" campaign. Man, as we know, is the world’s greatest enemy of the environment. US Journalist Clifford D. Sirak wrote about how world pollution started. He said, "The emergence of intelligence, I am convinced, tends to unbalance the ecology. In other words, intelligence is the great polluter. It is not until a creature begins to manage its environment that nature is thrown into disorder."

Today, every thinking person is concerned about the environment. His Eminence Jaime L. Cardinal Sin said, "We are only caretakers, accountable to God and to each other for whatever we do to our planet. Nobody has the monopoly of nature. Thus, I call on the authorities to put an end to the wanton abuse of our natural resources. Let us not destroy our world. Let us join forces in the fight against all forms of pollution. Let us make sure that the coming generations will also enjoy the gifts of God inasmuch as we are able to make use of them.

"We will discover that, for these reasons, our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or abusive economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility. It is also a form of blasphemy. It is flinging God’s gifts into His face, as of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them. For Dante, "despising Nature and her gifts was a violence against God. We have no entitlement from the Bible to exterminate or permanently destroy or hold in contempt anything on the earth or in the heavens above it or in the waters beneath it. We have the right to use the gifts of nature, but not to ruin or waste them. We have the right to use what we need, but no more than that."

We are very fortunate that today we have a person like Heherson T. Alvarez heading the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Way back in 1995, when Alvarez was a senator, he initiated a proposal for an international public and private partnership to hasten the development of renewable technologies. It was also Alvarez who in December of 1997 presented what came to be known as the Kyoto basket, a program of energy initiatives that cities and countries could adopt to preserve their environment. For that he was given the Climate Institute Public Policy Award at its Tenth Anniversary celebration in 1996 for his leadership on environmental problems not only in the Philippines but throughout the Asian Pacific Region.

We are fast losing our forests and we have many animal species that are on the verge of extinction. Worse, we ourselves are in danger of extinction. Metro Manila is one of the most polluted cities in the world. Look at Pasig River. It’s now a sewer. And now even Manila Bay is fast getting polluted. The environment concerns us all. We should all be concerned with the environment. There is no hope unless we all do our share.